The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient, Michelle Smith, which used the controversial and now discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which arose afterward throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. Some allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifice, pornography, and prostitution.
A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue", usually perpetuated by moral entrepreneurs and mass media coverage, and exacerbated by politicians and lawmakers. Moral panic can give rise to new laws aimed at controlling the community.
Lawrence Pazder was a Canadian psychiatrist and author. Pazder wrote the discredited biography, Michelle Remembers, published in 1980, with his patient Michelle Smith, which claimed to detail satanic ritual abuse.
Michelle Remembers is a discredited 1980 book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient Michelle Smith. A best-seller, Michelle Remembers relied on the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make sweeping, lurid claims about Satanic ritual abuse involving Smith, which contributed to the rise of the Satanic panic in the 1980s. While the book presents its claims as fact, and was extensively marketed on that basis at the time, no evidence was provided; all investigations into the book failed to corroborate any of its claims, with investigators describing its content as being primarily based on elements of popular culture and fiction that were popular at the time when it was written.
Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse. The collective cases are often considered a part of the Satanic panic. A 1982 case in Kern County, California, United States, first publicized the issue of day-care sexual abuse, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and various European countries.
Cathy O'Brien is an American conspiracy theorist and author who claims to have been a victim of a government mind control program called "Project Monarch", which she alleges was part of the CIA's Project MKUltra. O'Brien made these assertions in Trance Formation of America (1995) and Access Denied: For Reasons of National Security (2004), both of which she co-authored and self-published with her husband, Mark Phillips. According to scholars, there is no credible evidence for O'Brien's claims and there are numerous inconsistencies in her story.
Pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11, and boys at age 11 or 12, psychiatric diagnostic criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13. People with the disorder are often referred to as pedophiles.
Rosemarie Keller Skaine is an American author and sociologist. She is known for her nonfiction works, especially writings related to other cultures. She is currently an active freelance writer.
Anti-pedophile activism encompasses social actions against pedophiles. It also includes acts of anti-pedophile citizen vigilantism conducted by vigilante groups, some of which have operated alongside government agencies in countries such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
David Finkelhor is an American sociologist known for his research into child sexual abuse and related topics. He is the director of the Crimes against Children Research Center, co-director of the Family Research Laboratory and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire.
The Satanic panic in Utah is part of a broader moral panic that began in the 1980s as children in the United States, subjected to coercive interviewing techniques at the hands of zealous social workers, made unsubstantiated allegations of bizarre Satanic rituals and horrific sexual and physical abuse at the hands of day care workers. As the decade unfolded, clients of believing therapists began to make similar allegations, which are now generally seen as confabulations caused by iatrogenic therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis and automatic writing rather than the discovery of repressed memories. Despite the similarities between the allegations of adults and children, investigations produced only circumstantial, and in many cases contradictory evidence of the patients' disclosures. The court cases surrounding satanic ritual abuse (SRA) allegations were among the most expensive and lengthy in history and produced no convictions or convictions based solely on the testimony of children that were frequently overturned or dismissed upon appeal.
Kathleen 'Kee' MacFarlane is an American social worker known for involvement in the high-profile McMartin preschool trial in the 1980s. She was the Director of Children's Institute International. She developed the concept of the anatomically correct doll for children to use during interviews concerning abuse and played a significant role in the McMartin trial. MacFarlane has been criticized for her methods of interrogating small children. Charges against the defendants were eventually dropped.
Cult and Ritual Abuse: Its History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America is a book written by James Randall Noblitt and Pamela Sue Perskin exploring the phenomenon of satanic ritual abuse (SRA). The authors argue that some allegations of intergenerational, ritualized abuse cults are supported by evidence, contrary to most scholars of the subject who regard satanic ritual abuse as a moral panic with no factual basis. Noblitt, a clinical psychologist, is Director of the Center for Counseling and Psychological Services in Dallas, Texas. Perskin is the executive director of the International Council on Cultism and Ritual Trauma and a lecturer on child abuse.
The Oak Hill satanic ritual abuse trial occurred in Oak Hill, Austin, Texas, in 1991 when Fran Keller and her husband Dan, proprietors of a small day care, were accused of repeatedly and sadistically abusing several children.
Believe the Children was an advocacy organization formed by the parents involved in the McMartin preschool trial to promote the idea that allegations of Satanic ritual abuse were factual and not a moral panic. The organization's name was based on the slogan that the children, who were the primary sources of information about the alleged abuse, should be believed without question. The organization became a clearinghouse for information about ritual abuse from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. Few, if any, of the claims of ritual satanic abuse promoted by Believe the Children have been substantiated.
Valerie Sinason is a British poet, writer, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist who is known for promoting the idea that people with a developmental disability can benefit from psychoanalysis and also that satanic ritual abuse is widely practiced in the UK. She ran the workshop dealing with intellectual disability at the Tavistock Clinic for twenty years and also worked for 16 years as a consultant research psychotherapist at St George's Hospital Medical School. She is a Trustee of the Institute for Psychotherapy and Disability.
Child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome (CSAAS) is a syndrome proposed by Roland C. Summit in 1983 to describe how he believed sexually abused children responded to ongoing sexual abuse. He said children "learn to accept the situation and to survive. There is no way out, no place to run. The healthy, normal emotionally resilient child will learn to accommodate to the reality of continuing sexual abuse."
Elizabeth Laura Mullinar is a London-born former film casting consultant. She is one of the founders of Advocates for Survivors of Child Abuse and is the Founder of the Heal For Life Foundation and created the TREE Model of Trauma Recovery. Mullinar is regarded as an expert in the field of trauma. In 2019, she presented the TREE model at the International Congress of Trauma and Attachment alongside other trauma experts including American Psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, and British Psychoanalyst Peter Fonagy OBE.
Harold "Hal" Erickson is an American media historian who was a senior editor at AllRovi for 15 years starting in 1994 when it was known as "All Movies".
Diana Louisa Napolis, also known by her online pseudonym Karen Curio Jones or more often simply Curio, is an American former social worker. Between the late 1990s and 2000, Napolis posted a series of pseudonymous accusations alleging that individuals skeptical of the satanic ritual abuse moral panic were involved in a conspiracy to cover up the sexual abuse and murder of children. The pseudonymous poster's real life identity was confirmed as Napolis in 2000.
